Assume Nothing

It's been a while, I'm surprised this thread has been active for so many years. I suppose it annoys me that some of my older posts have such an eccentric, difficult to read tone. It's a shame, because I would have loved to have had a mentor figure in my life that would have been an older and wiser and more mature version of myself so I wouldn't have had to go through that phase. I've experienced this before, but experiencing this again feels weird. Does anyone else look back at some of their older conversations and think the same?

There's not a thing wrong with judging people objectively. I don't see why we must be so emotional about it. Or do you mean judgmental in a different way?

I think my INT preferences are about 80%+, but my J preference is only 1% or so. I've always been compelled to do both - understand sufficiently, then use said knowledge in an applicable manner (or in other words, to do). It's odd, I've never truly figured out where I stand with that... both remarkably similar by an external observer.

I usually would disagree with how we define things, but that sounds about right. I've lost part of my pedantic-ness D:

Explanation - * Plenty of people mistype as INTJs (it's just an exaggerated introvert) * INTJs tend to band around eachother on the internet anyway, with a personality type that makes them a little more MBTI aware than others

This article changed my perspective on cooking altogether. Just then, everything clicked - I suddenly understood why your typical roast turkey is dry and tasteless (unless under a sea of gravy). I understood why stews are so delicious, and how come pork chops always were too tough for me to enjoy. It's not like I never knew about internal temperature and its effects on food... it just suddenly became something I grasped. EDIT - I can finally do the goddamn url. That was fun.

I secretly have a weakness for chick flicks/romantic comedies. Specifically, FWB. ... is that bad?

If you need help with the cooking stuff, you can always message me. Or ask in /r/AskCulinary, where I usually hang. Oh, and today's one of my first posts in months. I've *really* disconnected with this group, but I am considering rejoining RS again. Or maybe not.

I figure most people confuse realism with pessimism. I'm closer on the realist end of the scale where I wouldn't trust the hopefuls and expect failure/hardships/negativity, but I wouldn't be *consumed* by it. I think when most people imagine realism/pessimism, they put themselves into a fairly depressive state of doubt... which is pretty unhealthy. Or at least, that's the way it's always seemed to me. As far as things that annoy me go... have we mentioned how telling someone they're black isn't racism yet?

I've always been INTJ, which tends to describe me well - always inside own head having full-on debates, emotionally unavailable with the exception of those closest to me, near immunity to personal criticism, to the famed death-glare that we tend to have, etc. I figure this is the one that most exaggerates introvert features too, so a lot of people happen to mistype as this. EDIT - someone asked what MBTI was. MBTI refers to 'Myer Briggs Type Indicator', which has 16 groups you could belong to - based loosely on Carl Jung's work on personality/temperament. The 4character code you're given stands for Intraversion/Extraversion - iNtuition/Sensing - Thinking/Feeling - Perceiving/Judging, focusing on how you internalize the external world and your social preferences (e.g. intraverts feel energized with alone-time, extraverts feel the opposite). I could go into more depth, but would probably end up taking up a large post. Feel free to read 'Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types' for more on this.

Hah. By my definitions, I consider optimism inherently blind. I don't quite follow how cynicism -> maturity, care to explain?

Damn, I missed my chance at the new thread. If believing that immigrants on the whole often have skill mismatches is considered racist, then I really don't know what isn't. EDIT @Alg - it's funny how a touch of cynicism is more in touch with reality than blind optimism, though.

As a society, we are not cynical enough.

If you took a moment to consider the whys, there's usually a reason for ethnic minorities being under-represented (or, what's perceived as under-represented) in the workforce. If we simplified hiring criterion to just two things - skill competency and ability to work with people, then we can reasonably argue that these criterion are based on cultural/environmental upbringing, the level of education acquired, and personality types. They all have some fairly direct relationship with employee demographics - e.g. if the immigrant culture is known to not be very competent at communication and lacks the correct skills to perform the job, it logically follows that there would be fewer immigrants working for firms like JaGex. Oh, and the all-whites thing? It's not true - they just don't appear on cam so often, but they are there. I'm not even sure why I'm writing this because as everyone else is saying, it's not worth being concerned over this. If it was about employment as a whole refusing to take on ethnic minorities on that basis alone, then that's worth discussing.

Ponder life. Relax. Enter a realm of mental and physical harmony. Become one with thy self. Get really, really clean. Seek pleasure. Take your pick.

EDIT - removed my own post.

... I feel strangely intrigued by his slut-shaming. I would really love to hear the finer points of how you slut shame - are we talking about doing it online, or real life here? Oh, and uh... what exactly do you do?

- If the rest of the world engaged in non-nuclear attack against the US, then what happens - who would win, and why? - If you had to choose one... would you rather know when you would die, or would you prefer to know how? - does it matter? - If all creatures had human intellect, then who would rein supreme in the animal kingdom?

I'm not arguing about a textbook, two people have sex then exchange money. The reason it needs to stay illegal is because how harmful legal prostitution is to the prostitutes. There's one problem. It's a statistical analysis. It does not tell us the motives and actions that caused the harm - it merely implies correlation. If we interpret and scrutinize the statistics, we may find that the cause is the fact that it's only legal in certain areas, or it's too open to foreign markets where it would otherwise be illegal. If you never look at incentives and motives, it's pretty easy to argue a case that just isn't true.

Pimping, human trafficking, child abuse, STDs, assault, drug abuse, stress, trauma. List goes on. For most of that, it's not prostitution that's the problem.

I'd love to know how having prostitution illegal allows the government to identify and help those in most need, when it merely pushes the market underground. Opportunity? If they've never acted on said opportunity, and never can act on it, is it really even there? There's enough undesirable things that surround prostitution that I'd rather the entirety of it be illegal than legal. I understand the hypocrisy of some of the laws right now; the difference between pornography and prostitution is only a web camera and an upload. Regardless of these loopholes and inconsistencies it's enough to keep the majority of the population from engaging in it. For now you'll just have to settle on titty bars. What does entirely illegal mean? On the same level as petty crime, or as a serious felony?

I think highlanders were referring to pedantry and semantics, not spelling. I don't actually mind talking to taxi drivers - it's just... as long as it goes beyond two hours of small-talk.

I hate to sound too intrusive right now, but do you live somewhere with a lot of migrant workers? I could only think of that being a possible cause, or that you have a pretty harsh accent. I suffer the same problem half the time (in a different scenario) too - it's difficult to make out what British Telecoms operators are trying to say on the phone regardless of who you get.

Pornography is quite different than prostitution. In the pornography industry, both participants are (hopefully) being paid, but they are not paying each other for the sexual act. Comparing gay marriage to prostitution isn't a very good comparison. Prohibiting gay marriage is wrong because our laws say that heterosexual couples can marry, but homosexual couples cannot. It's a matter of discrimination based on sexuality. We are not saying that "x" group of prostitutes can legally sell their bodies to another person, but "y" group cannot. saying "gays can't marry while straight people can" equates to "prostitutes cant have sex for money while pornstars can" in my book. it's still a discrimination based on sexuality, the only difference is orientation(preference) verse sexual feedom. Remember: the only difference between a hooker and a pornstar is a camera. Then you have missed my point entirely. Let me spell it out for you again so you may understand: Prostitution=one person soliciting sex, another paying for sex. Pornography=two people being paid to have sex by another party who then produces the act for entertainment value. They are entirely different things. Clever sayings do not equate the two. I think there is a way to separate pornography and prostitution though - the selection of whom to engage in intercourse with. It's probably harder for prostitutes to discriminate against the fat, the obese, and the ugly... let alone the STD-saturated john whom may be cheating on their partner, if it's based purely on money (which street prostitution, and window-prostitution is pretty much). If we're talking about escorts, on the other hand... EDIT - Oh, I appear to have replied to the wrong person. I meant that to be in response to the idea that porn = prostitution with a camera. With prostitution being legal, "hookers" would then be given a choice of their clients, yes? That sounds fair to me. It has to be a mutual agreement. I suggest you(all of you really) research the "registered companion" character of the Firefly universe. They have an absolutely brilliant system of respectful prostitution. Double post, but I missed this. Could you elaborate on which hookers we're talking about - every category has its own niche and appeal. I would imagine discrimination based on appearance could raise issue with disgruntled johns, if applied in window prostitution for example.

... you think the problems with illegal distilleries would be the same regardless of regulation? It's fairly straightforward that driving markets underground exposes it to more dangers than otherwise.